Disclaimer: Warehouse 13, the world and the characters that inhabit it do not belong to me in any way, though sometimes I lie away at night wishing that they did and what I'd do with them if they did. And then I write those thoughts down.
A/N: Right then. I suppose this is a direct response to Race's fic, and another entry into the Angst Plague 2012. Do not mistake me when I say that this has no redeeming value whatsoever. Be warned, ASSUME THE WORST GOING INTO THIS. Like, come up with the worst possible scenario you can and then read.
Helena sits alone, shrouded in darkness. The lights having long since been extinguished in the bed and breakfast, save the single hanging fixture still illuminating the stairs and hallway. But she's sitting in the armchair, turned away from the door, and so the light doesn't reach her.
The banner she'd helped Claudia hang above the fireplace earlier in the day – hand painted and glittered - had wriggled free of the tack holding it in place and fluttered down some time ago. It's purpose had been to welcome. Now it hangs limp and ripped at the corner, a cruel taunt. Helena doesn't so much as glance at it.
She sits, dark eyes focused on something unseen as she takes long, even breaths. Its her hand that truly gives her away as anything other than a woman lost in daydreams; balled into a fist atop the arm of the chair, knuckles a bright white against her already pale complexion.
This day was to have been to greatest of her life. One that would provide her with memories she would cherish and relived one last time before embracing the arms of whatever was next. This was the day they'd been planning for, waiting for, had spent sleepless nights whispering about under the cover of a darkness much like the one H.G. is blanketed by now.
But this darkness is heavy and cloying, utterly void of the light those moments had provided her with.
A light H.G. is sure she'll never see again.
And she sits, still as death itself as she gazes towards the cold and empty hearth. Motionless, lifeless, like a corpse.
And Death has been so very busy today.
The stuffed giraffe she carries is a muted kind of yellowish colour and she tucks all ten inches of it under her arm as she shoves her wallet haphazardly into her back pocket and plucks the bouquet of flowers out of the saleswoman's hand. For a hospital gift shop, the quality of their merchandise was quite above the expected sub-par, and Helena had all but fallen at the elderly woman's feet and lain kisses upon her shoes when she'd walked in to find the giraffe sitting there as if waiting for her. She'd wanted a giraffe. Being Myka's favourite animal – Helena had recalled a particular late night conversation as she'd picked the stuffed animal up, in which Myka had confessed that her love for them probably stemmed from being an awkward, gangly youth and identifying with the similarly clumsy-seeming creatures – Helena had been a tad obsessed with the idea ever since it had first struck her.
She'd have had one all prepared and ready, but Myka had gone into labour early and she'd been away on a mission when the call had come in.
"-and there aren't any towels here! What kind of Warehouse doesn't have towels?!" Claudia's voice was frantic, high-pitched, and H.G. had had to hold the phone away from her ear until the screeching died down. Despite her instantaneous panic over being hundreds of miles away, she willed herself to remain calm if for nothing other than the sake of the younger woman's nerves.
"Claudia, darling, please calm down." She kept her tone as even as possible, flying down the stairs to her hotel room and cupping her hand over her phone as she asked the receptionist behind the desk to call for a cab to take her to the airport. "It's dreadfully difficult to understand you when you're so..." she exhaled, using her words to cover the nervousness of the act, "violently exacerbated."
"Myka is having a baby in the middle of Artie's office!" H.G. held the phone away from her face again, wincing at the near ear-piercing shriek emanating from the redhead.
"Yes, you've mentioned that." Helena took the post-it the receptionist was offering her, glancing down to read the 'five minutes – at the curb' that had been scribbled onto its surface and pocketed it, though not before she ran the pad of her thumb over the yellow paper and let her mind skip back a few years. To another post-it note, that had been the beginning of everything. And now there was this one, ushering her forward towards another new beginning. Once she was just as desperate for. "Has Pete arrived yet?"
"No! I called him like an hour ago and-"
"Oh god, oh god, there's water or-or, not water, ew, ew, and you look like you peed your pants and-" And there was Pete's voice, calming Helena in a way she could never have anticipated a few short years ago.
"Pete!" And then Myka's, muffled by her distance from Claudia and spreading warmth through Helena despite the way her tone screamed 'irate'. "If you don't help me up out of this chair and into the car, I will castrate you." A small smile played across Helena's lips as she navigated her way through the revolving doors of the hotel and out onto the pavement.
"Hey! If there's any castrating to be done around here you can wait until H.G.'s back. She got you into this mess, not me!" And then Helena let out a chuckle, because she heard Myka's next words echoing in her head before the woman had chance to voice them.
"Oh, I'm a mess now, am I?" And then Claudia's voice was back, desperate and pleading.
"Dude, you have got to hurry up. I thought pregnant-hormonal-Myka was bad, but Myka-going-into-labour is like a monster."
She thinks back to the call, to the plane ride that followed – perhaps the longest of her entire life, or so it had felt – as she walks through the sterile-smelling hallways at a pace that would be better suited to a light jog. She sends a glance towards the map, an illustrated sheet of glass bolted to the wall, finds 'maternity' on there and then she's off again, moving the giraffe so she's grasping it in her hand.
When she skids into the ward, there's no one at the desk, and she spends a few seconds frantically searching her surroundings before she spots him.
It's like he almost disappears right into the stark white of the walls, his pallor is so similar a shade. He looks like a ghost, dark around the eyes, expression haunted.
She feels a weight, indefinable at first, drop like a thousand pound boulder from her chest, punching a hole in her stomach that pulls out all the air from her lungs.
He doesn't need to speak, lord knows she doesn't want him to.
"Helena..." Not 'H.G.'. H.G. is for friendly familiarity and relaxed, jovial conversation. "Can you..." He shifts as though his own body is foreign to him, moving closer to her. She stares at him, mind racing, but the thoughts are far beyond her grasp. "I need you to sit down." His eyes are dead. It's frightening, the lack of spark in them. The way the light just seems to have gone out. Her hand tightens around the gift, as the flowers fall limply to her side.
"I'd rather not." She says, not recognising her own voice as it leaves her strained and thick with something the rest of her body hasn't yet registered. Her eyes flit about the room. "Which room is Myka in?" She watches Pete wince at the name, and feels the hole in her stomach tear all the way into her chest. "Where is she, Pete?" The volume of her voice, the fierce desperation in it, brings the nurses back to the reception desk and as they meet Pete's eyes, Helena can practically feel understanding fall over them. And anger flares within her, because they don't know anything. Her legs begin to shake, her muscles vibrating as if the strength is being siphoned from them. Her vision begins to blur and it takes her far too long to realise that there are tears swimming in them. Pete becomes little more than a shape before her and she doesn't feel them as they fall. And the rest of the world is still and silent as Pete's broken words shatter its walls.
"She's gone, Helena." And she can feel the world crumble around her. She's aware of her grip faltering on the bouquet, but does nothing to right it, and Pete's eyes do not follow as the flowers drop to the tiles. She thinks he repeats it, feels some need to do so, and maybe minutes have gone by. Maybe he's worried Helena didn't hear.
Fleeting, she thinks it will be the only thing she hears for the rest of her life.
And maybe it's the weight of her own world crashing down upon her that causes the break, the cross-wiring of things in her brain, because suddenly she's convinced that this isn't real. That this is Pete's way of getting back at her, for Kelly, for everything.
"You're a liar." She spits, hate surging from nowhere, and Pete's expression doesn't even flicker. It remains the same mask of grief and pain, even as Claudia approaches from somewhere beyond a hallway to their left.
"I'm so sorry-"
"You are a liar." The words leave her as a controlled scream, a purposeful raising of her voice and with a stern edge. She can feel the fire in her gaze, but where once it burned hot, it only feels empty and cold.
And who was it that said the eyes were the window to your soul?
She glances towards Claudia to find the young agent's eyes bloodshot and swollen, and confusion sparks within her. Why is she crying? Doesn't she know that this is all just make believe? That it can only be make believe, because this simply cannot be happening.
She will not lose another. She refuses, and Myka always teases her about how Helena rarely fails to get her way in anything.
She's pulled out of another memory as Pete whispers his condolences again and something in her breaks even further, like a wrecking-ball against the beams of a house, shattering everything in its path. A strangled sob leaves Claudia's throat as he moves towards her despite every inch of Helena's posture screaming out for distance, lest she lash out. And of course that's exactly what she does as his arms move about her. She's aware, though very minutely, of Claudia's anguished wails, but she's focused on the feel of flesh beneath her fists as she throws punch after punch into Pete's chest. To his credit, he barely grunts, and manages to pull he close against him.
It's not long until she closes her eyes, tears spilling over and trailing along her cheeks to their inevitable deaths. She finally loses her battle with gravity and her legs simply cease functioning, and she collapses against Pete with enough force to push them both to their knees. He clings to her, gathering her up in his arms as best he can as his own sobs shake his frame.
"Where is Myka?" And now her voice it entirely alien to her. Thick and broken, an agonised whine that pierces the heart of anyone close enough to hear her question. It takes Pete a short while to gather enough breath to form an answer.
"She's gone." And there's a long, painful moment of quiet, in which naught but the faint beep of monitors and the anguish of fractured souls is discernible. Helena isn't sure when Pete started rocking then, only knows that he is, and she can feel it in the way he's holding her. Saw it in his empty gaze. Felt it in her heart the second she laid eyes on him.
"Our daughter-" He releases a pained wail, muffled against her hair as he holds her closer.
She can feel his tears, tracing the curve of her ear.
Helena does not want to feel any longer.
Helena sits alone, shrouded in darkness. Lights everywhere have long since been extinguished, far before their time.
Her hand is still curled around the soft, yellow giraffe who shall never feel the tiny grip of its proposed owner.
There flowers likely sit in a garbage can, ready to wither and die.
And Helena stares unseeing, dimly aware of the hollow, empty thing beating inside her chest.
And wishes it would cease.